The View from Saturday

From the Newbery Medalwinning author of the beloved classic From the MixedUp Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler comes four jewellike short storiesone for each of the team members of an Academic Bowl teamthat ask questions and demonstrate surprising answers.How had Mrs. Olinski chosen her sixthgrade Academic Bowl team? She had a number of answers. But were any of them true? How had she really chosen Noah and Nadia and Ethan and Julian? And why did they make such a good team?It was a surprise to a lot of people when Mrs. Olinskis team won the sixthgrade Academic Bowl contest at Epiphany Middle School. It was an even bigger surprise when they beat the seventh grade and the eighth grade, too. And when they went on to even greater victories, everyone began to ask: How did it happen?It happened at least partly because Noah had been the best man (quite by accident) at the wedding of Ethans grandmother and Nadias grandfather. It happened because Nadia discovered that she could not let a lot of baby turtles die. It happened when Ethan could not let Julian face disaster alone. And it happened because Julian valued something important in himself and saw in the other three something he also valued.Mrs. Olinski, returning to teaching after having been injured in an automobile accident, found that her Academic Bowl team became her answer to finding confidence and success. What she did not know, at least at first, was that her team knew more than she did the answer to why they had been chosen.